The present invention relates to infant care centers of the type that provide a support or bed for the infant and which provide care facilities to that infant.
As an example of such infant care centers, it is normal to provide overhead heating units for warmth to the infant, as well as more complex centers where photo-therapy may be used for bilirubin therapy and equipment may include oxygen availability, suction or monitoring instruments for attending to the infant.
One of the desirable features of such centers is that the infant bed be adjustable to different positions so that the infant can be retained in a generally horizontal orientation or can be moved to the Fowler position or Trendelenberg position to counteract physiological deficiencies.
Various means have been employed to allow tilt adjustment of the beds in infant care centers, including tilt mechanisms that feature discreet steps in which the bed is tilted to certain angles and some keying mechanism utilized to retain the bed at the desired angle. Other mechanisms have included single acting air spring pistons that are locked into the desired position by mechanical locks.
The present tilt mechanisms have certain deficiencies, however, in that one desirable feature is to have the infant bed tiltable to any number of positions within the defined limits; that is, the attending personnel have a great variety of positions that may be chosen and not just a few that are preselected by the manufacturer of the care center.
In addition, an important consideration is the ease of adjustment. Because personnel attending to infants already are normally quite busy with their principal concern, the infant, the tilt adjustment should be extremely easy and convenient to operate so that the desired tilt angle can be achieved without diverting the attention of such personnel to any real extent from the infant. Thus the controls are best suited to being in a readily accessible location and also be positive in action, that is, once the desired tilt angle is set, the personnel must be reasonably assured that such angle is maintained in that location quickly and surely and without fear of a quick movement or slippage in the locking mechanism.